Multicore and GPU Programming for Video Games (2012)

Multicore and GPU Programming for Video Games (2012)

Software for Fall 2012

If you want to set up your machine with the various programs we will use in
this class, so you can work on your own machine instead of the ones in the lab
(which is encouraged), this page of links is for you.
(We may not use everything listed here in this particular
offering, but this is all good stuff to have on your hard drive if you
are interested in the course topics.) Even if your machine does not have
a sufficiently powerful
graphics card, you may still be able to download some of the SDKs and
write and compile code on your machine, and then later try running
the code on one of the lab
computers (or a friend’s computer with a better graphics card.)


Unfortunately, our use of XNA will restrict us to using Microsoft Windows,
either Vista or Windows 7. I will be using Windows 7. (Microsoft does not officially
support using XNA 4.0 under
Windows XP. It might work, or it might not. I haven’t tried it.)


If you use a Macintosh, you install Windows on a “Boot Camp” partition separate from your
Mac OS partition. I’ve also
had luck running Visual Studio 2010 and XNA 4.0 with various virtualization packages, with
as VMware, but that can be dicey — sometimes the graphics API calls don’t translate correctly,
and if you’re doing something memory and processor intensive, it’s better to avoid all
the overhead of virtualization. So having the option to boot straight into your Windows
partition is useful.


If you are primarily a Linux user, you might be able to run XNA under Wine… or not.
Who knows.


I will only “officially support” the use of Vista or Windows 7 (either on a usr
on a Mac running Boot Camp, which is basically acting as a usual PC). You’re welcome to try
other options for running XNA, but I probably won’t be able to help if you run into trouble.

GPU-related programs

XNA Game Studio

  • Make sure you have Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (in theory you should
    be able to get this from DreamSpark through either
    ECE
    or CoC) –
    also be sure to install the latest updates via
    Microsoft
    Update


  • Microsoft XNA
    Game Studio 4.0 Refresh     — be sure to download XNA after you
    have Visual Studio 2010 (and latest updates) installed

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